


Whither are ye banished?

by vass



Category: Yevgeniy Onegin | Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin
Genre: M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last chance to see...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whither are ye banished?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



_I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.  
I do not think that they will sing to me._  
\- T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_.

One night Evgeny seeks the side  
Of Lensky, just before the duel  
Too full of things he could not hide  
Thinking that not to speak were cruel  
Yet also fearing he will rue  
The things he says, however true.  
Lensky is in his plain nightgown.  
He looks Evgeny up and down  
As if to say: why did you come  
To rake up things still unawoken?  
Friend, some things are best unspoken.  
The look he gives contains the sum  
Of hidden looks and hidden ways  
He's sought Evgeny, in happier days.

Watching Evgeny all the while  
With wary eyes and lowered brow  
He: "Are you here to reconcile?"  
Evgeny, nonchalantly: "How?"  
Vladimir, toying with his sheet,  
Does not offer his friend a seat.  
Evgeny, twiddling his thumb  
Does not descend to ask for one,  
But stood with half-averted face,  
Still wearing his full evening dress  
(Vladimir wearing rather less)  
A visitor quite out of place  
Trying to be cool, although  
With what success he does not know.

Lensky regards a gold icon,  
Cosmas and Damian, on the wall.  
He says "Some things cannot be bygones."  
Onegin replies "Not at all."  
 _I came to see you, friend, once more  
To memorise your face, before..._  
Evgeny's ready wit has failed  
His confidence has been derailed.  
Reader, when your courage rises,  
Is it before or after when  
The moment most wants courage? Then,  
Or bitter years after the crisis?  
Onegin's of the latter sort.  
Alas, he's come here all for naught.

Vladimir, for his part, is still  
Ready to meet his friend and fight,  
And yet almost against his will.  
He does not doubt that he is right,  
But does not want to find, at last,  
He's blighted present, future, past.  
Not even looking at Evgeny,  
He quietly says "Do you have any  
Idea what you have done? Excuse?"  
Evgeny remained dignified.  
He says "Would you rather I lied?  
And after all that, what's the use?"  
Was that a trace of agitation,  
Or only his imagination?

Onegin remembers, far away  
In time before when they had played  
Billiards: one specific day  
When not a single word was said  
Between them in the billiard room  
When who had put his hand on whom  
To help him pose to take the shot?  
And who then, rooted to the spot  
Wishing that it would last forever,  
The simple and unasked-for aid  
That made him suddenly afraid,  
Knowing no matter what, he'd never  
Admit he didn't need the hand?  
Reader, do you understand?

Lensky is thinking of the time  
When he and Evgeny drank wine  
And he had said "Come with me, I'm  
Visiting our neighbours. Dine  
With me and them for friendship's sake.  
He should have known how high the stake.  
But now not only have they lost  
Their sweet friendship, but it will cost  
One of their lives. He hates to think  
And cannot calculate the wrong  
That he or Evgeny will sink  
Into oblivion before long.  
If he would just apologise!  
Vladimir closes both his eyes.

Evgeny is still standing there  
Watching Vladimir feign sleep  
Wishing he could search somewhere  
To find a way that he could keep  
Both honour and friendship too.  
Evgeny, it's up to you:  
Make a full apology  
And if, should he accept it, be  
Ready then to go away.  
But you cannot do that, for  
You were hoping still for more.  
Therefore, you can never say  
"Friend, let all between us cease;  
I will leave you now in peace."

Picture now some lines crossed over  
Written not to a country maid  
But dedicated to another  
Laboured over in the shade  
Of night, and also of denial  
When the poet made a trial  
Of an abstract beau-ideal  
That had lately come to steal  
On his mind. It had no name  
And no face. This apparition  
Did not rouse Lensky's suspicion,  
Just his lines. When of the game  
Vladimir began to tire  
He consigned them to the fire.

Had he lived in a later era,  
Evgeny might have ignored  
Tatiana, Olga, Tasha, Vera,  
Spent all night on a messageboard  
With anon friends, abhorring light,  
And might have, to his parents' fright,  
Become what's called 'hikikomori'  
But that is another story,  
One where coldness, cynicism  
Are not always all the fashion  
Inspiring epistolary fashion  
From young ladies lithe and lissom.  
As it is, they snap their fan  
At the romantic gentleman.

Vladimir is the perfect type  
Of the poet pastoral.  
Gentlemanly, harmless, ripe  
For romances, but always moral,  
Never _inconvenable_ , not  
Blowing too cold or too hot.  
Always respectable, but, mind,  
Still flesh and blood beneath. A wind  
Makes the bedroom's curtains billow.  
The silence all around them grows.  
Without changing any status quos,  
Vladimir toys with his pillow.  
Perhaps he sees what might have been.  
Perhaps that's all he's ever seen.

Evgeny, on his dilemma's horns,  
Rubs his hands, rocks back on his heels,  
Stretches, elaborately yawns  
While inside his courage congeals.  
To speak or not to speak? Hamlet,  
The multitudes are in your debt  
For this 'to this or not' locution.  
It has become an institution.  
Evgeny, the answer which you seek  
Depends on if you're feeling brave.  
It's always, in the past, to save  
Yourself embarrassment, been 'not to speak.'  
Will this time be much different,  
Or is your nerve already spent?

Lenksy wants to take his rest  
Before tomorrow's great event.  
He doesn't care whether a jest  
Was all Onegin's dancing meant.  
It touched his honour, and a nerve  
That Evgeny could thus observe  
The person next-dearest to him  
And taunt him with it, on a whim.  
Silent, he wills his friend to go  
Who stands there looking diffident  
As if to beg him to repent,  
Call off tomorrow's duel, although  
Evgeny still remains quite mute,  
Scuffing the heel of his best boot.

Within Evgeny is something broken  
And also something unsaid.  
The thing within him that's unspoken  
Does not lie within his head.  
The broken thing's his selfish heart  
Now by Lensky blown apart.  
But he did not break it first  
That, Evgeny knows, is worst:  
His far too-indulgent upbringing  
Kept his lazy heart asleep.  
Now awake, his heart will keep,  
Along with that he can't say, stinging.  
He cannot say it, even on pain  
Of not having the chance again.

Now awake, his heart will be  
Vulnerable to attacks  
From all fronts. Now he can see  
How his newly cracked heart lacks  
Defences, and will break again  
Like a greensick boy, and when  
He succumbs, he'll lose his head  
Abandoning the life he's led  
Maybe over some young girl.  
Even, maybe, one he knows  
And should have pitied for her woes.  
Evgeny wants to hurl  
His heart far from him. He sighs.  
Hopes he will be the one who dies.

 _I could not say: friend, when I taunted  
You by dancing with your bride  
It was always you I wanted.  
So I hid behind my pride  
And instead invoked your wrath._  
The two enstranged friends watch a moth  
Batting the glass around a flame.  
Evgeny's sorry that he came.  
A snowy owl hoots out a warning.  
Vladimir puts his hand in his  
And all their friendship comes to this.  
And then they part, until the morning  
Evgeny shoots his best friend dead.  
My friends, there's no more to be said.


End file.
